Date of Submission

Fall 2020

Academic Program

Global and International Studies

Project Advisor 1

Michelle Murray

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College. Joseph Nye’s concept of soft power has shaped the 21st century. Soft power represented a new form of power that departed from conventional traditional power defined by military and economic power. Soft power was instead based on a cooperative, non-military, and non-interventionist strategy. However, soft power has proven that it is unable to sufficiently address the current context of global instability and growing frustrations with inequality and injustice. This invites an exploration of a feminist international relations perspective and a feminist foreign policy as alternative approaches to soft power. This paper, therefore, examines and critiques the conceptualization of soft power as advanced by Joseph Nye and Craig Hayden. In addition, it explores J. Ann Tickner’s understanding of a feminist international relations perspective and puts this perspective in conversation with Nye and Hayden’s ideas about soft power. Then, a feminist foreign policy is advanced as a promising alternative to soft power. Finally, the paper concludes with a call to action to encourage further understanding of feminist international relations perspectives in order to encourage opportunities for genuine feminist foreign policies globally.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Download

This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.

Bard Off-campus Download

Bard College faculty, staff, and students can login from off-campus by clicking on the Off-campus Download button and entering their Bard username and password.

Share

COinS